


A Sudden Expectation

by Zeugma46



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Gender Dysphoria, Genderfluid Character
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-11
Updated: 2018-11-11
Packaged: 2019-08-22 07:00:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16593086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zeugma46/pseuds/Zeugma46
Summary: Maul makes some realizations, takes a different path, and reaches something close to peace.Ft. A slew of characters who just want Maul to be happy.





	A Sudden Expectation

 

When Maul was young he had limited access to the Holonet. It served as supplemental information for his education. Nothing more. But he never saw the need. Deenine gave him his basic education. The training droids taught him how to train his body for his future as a Sith. His Master had his own lessons to teach. There was simply no time for extraneous information that merely satisfied vague curiosity, he thought.

 

Until one day, after a lesson with Deenine about cultures with more than two genders, he logged on. A catalogue of species was easy to pull up on his datapad, there was no restriction on such a search. And yet, he tucked his knees closer to himself, a habit of fear, like he was waiting for the sound of his Master approaching down the hall to his room after an obvious error on his part had been made. There were no footsteps. Just the whir of the cleaning droid going down the hall.

 

After several moments of baited breath and listening, he continued his search. He entered “Zabrak” into the search bar.

 

The image of a male Iridonian zabrak appeared on the screen. The zabrak male was a young man with six horns on his head. Maul unconsciously touched the base of his right temple horn, thumbing up the groove of the horn to the tip. It wasn’t as long as the zabrak’s horns in the image.

 

He swiped right to the second image: a female Iridonian. Her horns were in a different pattern but seemed of equal length to those of the male’s. At least, through her brown hair they did. Her hair was short, curling at the ends where they just passed her ears.

 

Maul swiped back to the male. Then back to the female. He scrolled down to the notes where it said females were more likely to grow hair on their scalps than their male counterparts. He took a finger and trailed it up past his brow, past his crown where his horns grew to stroke along the top of his head. The skin was smooth. Nothing to denote stubble or any presence of hair. It was fine that there was no hair, he reasoned to himself. Then, he wondered why that thought to came to him. There was no distinct advantage to having hair, after all. Not on Iridonia, at least.

 

He berated himself at that moment. He was Dathomirian, not Iridonian. He entered the new search at the top and let the page change. A grainy image appeared. Whereas the Iridonian page had clear, clinical images of the zabraks, this one seemed to be taken on an out-dated holorecorder in the wilds. The Dathomirian zabrak seemed shocked and hostile about this surprise recording on his right, spear in one hand as he walked out of a forest, the image catching him in mid-stride. He was looking over his shoulder at whoever recorded him. Maul got the feeling the person taking this image never made it back off Dathomir.

 

This male had longer horns than the Iridonian, with menacing angles that had to have been filed to look so. While the Iridonians were a subtle tan, this zabrak had a vibrant yellow skin tone with deep brown markings similar to Maul’s own.

 

He tried to swipe to the female image but the screen remained as it was. Irritated, he tried again. A message popped up asking if he was searching for “Nightsister.”

 

Maul tapped the link.

 

A pale human female appeared onscreen. The dark markings surrounding her eyes exacerbated the pallor of her skin. She was even paler than his Master. Despite being a clinical image, the woman glowered ahead of her as if she was angered Maul had opened the page.

 

The page said Nightsisters were categorized as human, although some believed they were a subcategory due to the high frequency of force-sensitives among the population. The lengths of their force skills reportedly extended to genetic manipulation.

 

With his little education about biology, outside of knowing the most vulnerable parts of a sentient being to strike a lethal blow, Maul was able parse out a simple fact from the scientific text. He shut off the datapad and put it away. The dull aching feeling in his chest shouldn’t have meant anything. Even as he slid under his bedcovers and curled up on himself, he couldn’t push the thought out of his head:

 

_Dathomirian women are almost an entirely different species than the men._

 

It meant nothing. It was just a fact. But the ache felt cold and numbing despite the covers pulled over him.

 


End file.
